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Ex-TTC boss gets house arrest for foster daughter sex

A former high-ranking TTC manager has been sentenced to two years of house arrest for having sex with his 15-year-old foster daughter and getting her pregnant.

The Crown had asked for a penitentiary sentence of more than two years for Howard Smith, 61, but Justice Jane Kelly said he was remorseful, in ill health, and had already suffered the shattering of his otherwise good reputation.

He worked for the Toronto Transit Commission for 36 years until 2008 and was promoted 17 times, finally supervising 5,000 people as the General Superintendent of Surface Transportation.

The now-49-year-old victim, who can only be identified as B.H., stormed out the courtroom in disgust.

“I feel that the judge not only let me down but I feet the judge let down the future victims of the CAS (children’s aid) and all the current victims of the CAS,” she later told reporters.

Toronto’s Catholic Children’s Aid Society (CCAS) placed B.H. in Smith’s home in 1978. He was 24 and married with two other children.

Then a fragile 14-year-old, B.H. had been placed in 22 foster homes in two years.

After she turned 15, Smith forced her into unprotected intercourse three or four times.

He pleaded guilty in January to having sex with a girl under 16 and another related charged. Crown prosecutor Jonathan Smith (no relation) withdrew a rape charge.

When she got pregnant, CCAS workers refused to believe Smith was the father and placed her in a home for unwed mothers. They tried to persuade her to give up the baby girl, the judge said. She raised the girl on her own and moved to London, Ont., where she says she was hounded by non-Catholic children’s aid officials.

She approached police in 2010. Smith took a paternity test, which showed he is the father.

“To describe her appearance as that of a broken woman would be an understatement,” Kelly said. “She suffers from chronic sleep problems, eating disorders and nightmares.”

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